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Saturday 8 February 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Wheatley, Dennis
(1897-1977) UK author who served in both World War One and World War Two, in the latter conflict with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 1941-1944. He was a prolific and extremely popular author of many espionage thrillers and historical romances, although the best of his work – and since his death the only category of his large oeuvre to be read at all widely – consists of a number of black-magic tales in ...
Davis, Frederick C
(1902-1977) US author of pulp fiction, sometimes under pseudonyms, from 1922 or earlier. He published detective fiction in book form from the mid-1930s until the end of his active career in the late 1960s. His most interesting early work of sf interest – mainly through explanations of the one-way Moon-shaped glass helmet worn as a disguise by the crimebusting hero – was the Moon Man sequence, 39 novellas published from 1933 to 1937 in Ten Detective Aces. After the ...
Whitnall, Harold O
(1877-1945) US academic and author, whose nonfiction focused on prehistory, with popular studies of early flora and fauna. His Hunter of the Caverns (1939) is a Prehistoric SF tale set in southern France about 30,000 years ago. [JC]
Silent Running
Film (1971). Universal. Directed by Douglas Trumbull. Written by Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino and Steve Bocho, from a story by Trumbull. Cast includes Bruce Dern. 90 minutes. Colour. / All plant life on Earth has been destroyed in the aftermath of a nuclear Holocaust; only vast orbiting Spaceships like Valley Forge, with its external hydroponic domes, still contain ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...